'Blindspot' Season 5 Episode 7 Review: Team's small winning moments are cut down by Madeline's growing cruelty
Spoilers for Season 5 Episode 7
On the brink of wrapping up its fifth and final season, NBC's 'Blindspot' is leaving no stone unturned to keep the story as twisted as possible and their viewers as entertained as the thoughts of watching the rogue agents one last time can be. From bringing back extremely beloved characters from the past to introducing newer ones unexpectedly crucial to the plot, Season 5 has been a joyride with the most tragic beginning — Edgar Reade's (Rob Brown) death.
And that brings us to the core antagonist who has been causing all this: Madeline Burke (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). Charged with what they have been calling "zipping" masses, Madeline wants to erase people's memories and her first stops are Libya and Hungary. On her quest, she will stop at nothing, not even harming her own son. But what drives Madeline to be so ruthless? Will her son survive his mother's sinister motives? That is something Episode 7 leaves us stewing under.
The episode opens with Patterson (Ashley Johnson) finding out where the Zip was being manufactured and the team had a new mission at hand: destroy all the supply at the production facility before Madeline could actually put it to any use. Despite her and Rich Dotcom (Ennis Esmer) fetching all the supplies, it turns out Madeline has additional supplies of Zip stored throughout the world so there's no stopping her all at once.
At best, she has been delayed, as was clear with her mercenary leader Ivy helping with flying the Zip back to the US. Patterson digs out that Ivy and Dabbur Zann were sending out teams to Libya and Hungary and that revealed where the Zip supply could be. The agents once again teamed up: Tasha Zapata (Audrey Esparza) with Rich and Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) with Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander).
And as expected, things fall apart on Tasha's end with her and Rich not reaching in time to take the Zip supplies off the plane it was being transported through. In the end, Tasha gets stuck on the plane, pretending to be a doctor, while Rich is left behind and Kurt and Jane meanwhile try their best to succeed at the mission on their end at least. But while Kurt is out there trying to stop Madeline, the episode really takes time to almost personify Madeline's sinister motives with the way she hunts down Kurt's ex first and later zips her own son to stop her plans from getting derailed.
Back when Ivy was interrogating Kurt, she managed to dig information about his ex and the mother of his child — Allie. Madeline now hunts the same woman down and threatens to hold her without trial, and also hits at the prospect of their daughter losing a mother too. Emotional blackmail and brazen manipulation later, it is only when we see Madeline's son Greg on the flight with Tasha and how clueless he is about what Madeline's making him do that we truly grasp the full extent of how low she's ready to stoop.
Greg, a doctor, believes he is carrying supplies to the refugee camps in Jordan whereas he is stacked with Zips for Madeline; Tasha tries reasoning with him at first, but it is only after forcibly holding him at gunpoint that Greg listens and despite the ongoing tension, it's a sad moment nevertheless. Greg learns the true reality of his mother — the same woman who he thought was sending him with supplies for refugees. The exceptional use of expository tropes isn't lost on the procedural and works extremely well, even at a time when it's wrapping up the five-year-long story of how our team of FBI agents went rogue in the eyes of law.
Tasha tells Greg all about Madeline's terrorism — how she bagged her new job title of Director of Federal Law Enforcement and how he plans of ruling the world had turned her into a person horrible enough to kill anybody who gets in the way. Poor Greg looked as if it's something he had an inkling about deep down but didn't want to face, thus explaining why he never bothered checking the crates he was carrying.
In a way, this was quite the dark coming-of-age story for the not-so-prodigal son who was still somehow reluctant to believe someone poisoning him about his own mother. It is only when Tasha tells him about Madeline having drugged her husband and his father's coffee to kill the man and take over his position at HCI Global that Greg started seeing sense.
Madeline's burning hatred for big governments as she believed they killed her father was the driving force behind her masterplan to uproot the planet of life as we know it. And she was going to stop at nothing; not even her own son - a realization that finally changed Greg's stand on his loyalty towards his mother and he allowed Tasha to destroy the crate he was carrying.
Meanwhile, Kurt and Jane are also able to destroy the Hungary supplies. Kurt's only respite being Bethany not present with Allie when news the latter's capture reached him. These little wins are rounded off by Greg also offering to help them in their plans further, but he is no match for his mother. Madeline finds out about the destroyed supplies and resorts to older practices. She drugs Greg and locks him away at a secure site that not even she has full knowledge of just to avoid any further derailment of her plan. With hearts of gold and the conscience to do the right thing, our rogue agents are fighting against an evil force of nature who wouldn't even stop at her own family members to get what she wants. If she can do this to her own son, one can only imagine the fear Kurt or Jane might feel as parents. And suddenly, everything turns into a giant big win for Madeline. What happens to Greg is still a gaping black hole of uncertainty, but his chances are definitely not bright.
'Blindspot' Season 5 airs on Thursdays at 9 pm on NBC.